Baby
by Brunette
Summary: Nobody calls him baby, nobody says 'I love you so.' Nobody calls him baby, I guess he'll never know.


_Author's Note: As people who are reading_ Love Story_ will kindly note, here lies another skewing of priorities. I actually wrote about half of this a month ago, but somehow it disappeared. I don't know how it disappeared, but it did. Something sad I've noticed is the utter lack of background fics there are here. Talk about fun. The first fic I ever wrote (can't read it anymore; it's deleted) was a background fic. So it sort of surprised me at the lack of them in this fandom. C'mon people. Get with it._

_Disclaimer: I do not own Newsies. This is important for legal reasons, I guess. I think it's also important for all of you to note that this is most definitely not a songfic, nor does it contains lyrics. The different segments of the story are simply separated by poetic segments (they have outlawed those yet, have they?) that may or may not have been inspired by Go Fish's "Baby." Oh, and Warden Lawes was a real person. I can't exactly tell you much about him, except that he really existed. So he's not mine. Jacob Henry Schiff was also a real person -- he was a famous Jewish banker and financer in the 1890's. Joseph Pulitzer, obviously, was a real person as well. _

_In case you have any difficulty figuring out who the boys are, please revert to this segment.  
Part A Hint: Frank is a nickname for Francis.  
Part B Hint: Cruccifixio wants to teach the boy how to gamble. ("Your games lose you money")  
Part C Hint: "Jeeze, boy, ya're ... "_

* * *

_nobody calls him baby  
nobody says i love you so_

He looked thinner this time, Warden Lawes thought. Maybe the boy always looked like that. But for some reason, he looked more sullen this time. He was too young to have that sort of swagger to his step. Liquor? Maybe just girls. How old was he now? He could ask the boy, but he'd only get those stony dark eyes in return. The boy contained within him the same seething distrust of authority figures that every other streetrat harbored.

"Hey, Frank," he attempted. The boy turned around, as if the warden had prodded him with a hot iron, and glared as if those words had been seared into his flesh.Warden Lawes frowned, slightly offended. "You are Frank Sullivan, right, boy?"

He shrugged, resuming his walk. Lawes only followed him to be sure he made it safely to his father's cell. The boy knew the path well enough to make it by himself. He was probably tough enough to get there by himself, too, the warden reminded himself as an afterthought. He didn't like the thought of the boy walking down the narrow passage alone, though. He was a good boy, to keep coming to see his father. Very few children came to see their fathers in prison. They were taking the easy road. They were avoiding the pain.

This little fella, this Frank Sullivan, he stood like a man and took the sight and words of his father remarkably well. Sometimes he walked out of there crying, but his shoulders were always straight, and his head was always high. Warden Lawes figured he'd be a good soldier.

The boy paused before the familiar cell door, glancing up to send the warden a dismissing gaze. Lawes smiled sadly, nodding. He turned to go, but his step was slow. He never went too far. He wanted to make sure that man didn't do too much damage. Bruises to the heart don't heal.

"Hey, Pops."

The boy already had shed an Irish accent for the fastspeech of the streets.

Lawes heard the older Sullivan bring himself to his feet lazily, heard him shuffle his waning bulk to the bars of the cell, heard him lean up against the rusting metal.

"Hey, Franky." There was something very smokey and hazy about the young man's voice. When Sullivan was brought into the prison, he was a healthy, muscular, dangerous man-too-soon; he was broken now, mind and body, and probably spirit, if it was not already being tormented in Hell. "Can I bum a cigarette?"

Lawes rolled his eyes, listening to the rustle of fabric as the boy produced a little roll of tobacco for his father. _Father_. By normal standards of age, Sullivan should have been Frank's brother.

"Whaddya do, Pops?" the boy asked conversationally. Sullivan laughed.

"Ya're a regular street-wise. I do fine."

He didn't ask the same of his son. Lawes could feel the nervous, pretensious silence drifting down the hallway. He bit his lip hopefully, willing Sullivan to show the slightest interest in the boy.

"That yah boy, Sully?" somebody in the next cell shouted.

"That's what they tell me," Sullivan shouted back. " 'Course knowin' his ma, he could be yours, O'Banion. Hey, Frank, go take O'Banion a cigarette. Might as well take care 'a all yah pops."

Lawes glanced down at his feet, taking a deep breath. He didn't cry at his mother's funeral, but when Frank Sullivan stopped by to visit his father, he was always reduced to tears for one reason or another. He could hear the boy walking obediently over to the neighboring jail cell, handing the inmate a cigarette.

"Hey, thanks, son," O'Banion mocked good-humoredly.

The boy returned to his father. Lawes had been praying he'd just walk away.

"Ma doin' okay?" Sullivan asked apathetically. The warden choked back his anger. Always the question about his wife. Always the reminding:

"Ma's dead, Pops."

And _always_ the chuckled. "Well then she's doin' better than she ever do."

It was bad enough he always had to make the boy remember he's mother was dead -- then to insult her ...

"Don't say that, Pops." He was gutsy today. Sullivan's laughter faded.

" 'Scuse me?"

Lawes begged that God prevent the boy from repeating himself. And God said no.

"Don't say that stuff, Pops. It ain't right."

_"Ain't_ it?" Sullivan dared the boy to reprimand him again.

_Please, boy, just appologize. Just walk away._

"No. It _ain't."_

"Looks like yah boy's holier'n you, Sully," O'Banion taunted. And Lawes knew that the redheaded loudmouth wasn't the only one hoping Sullivan would rage. They were like the Romans, feeding Christians to the lions. Watching in sick amusement as the defenseless are torn to shreds for what is right.

"You s'pose?" it was another dare. Another challenge.

"No, Pops, I don't -- I don't think I'm better --"

"Then what the hell're you tellin' me what to do for? You think you got a right?"

"No, Pops, I just -- don't talk about Ma like that --"

"Like what? She was my wife, ain't she? I can talk how I want."

_Which is the boy and which is the adult?_

"Yeah, Pops. I ... I'm sorry, Pops."

_And which one should be sorry?_

"You better go on home, Franky."

"Y-- yeah, Pops."

_nobody calls him baby  
i guess he'll never know_

He looked Italian. He spoke it with all the precision and accuracy of a boy born in Palermo, or Rome. He acted Italian. His walk and his mannerisms and his habits were all from the same place as theirs. Cruccifixio's heart was afire with rage. This was enough. The boy was Italian enough. He wanted them to leave the poor boy alone.

The spiting was most evident in Donna Maria, followed very closely by the boy's one mother, Stephania. She was a selfish little shrew, Stephania. She hated the boy, because she had ruined herself by having him. She was at fault, and he was put to blame. And Donna Maria, that old, fossilizing matriarch, had no trouble encouraging it.

Well, Cruccifixio was a man, and a man could settle their feline accounts with a ten-year-old boy. He had precidence even over Donna Maria, because he was a man, and her brother for good measure. Younger, but still the man. And the boy had no father to protect him; no man in the house to defend him from their endless pecking torment. A man, even an Irish man like the boy's father, could have put a brat like Stephania in her place. Cruccifixio was not one to advocate striking a woman, but a child (and child she was in the selfish confines of her mind) ought not be spared the rod.

He watched the boy now, stuck inside on a day such as this when the other boys were out playing. Donna Maria said it was important to allot Stephania the single luxury of hiding her shame; of hiding her bastard boy from the world. Cruccifixio told her blatantly that the whole damn tenement had heard the girl giving birth, anyway; he might as well be able to play outside like a human boy. Cooped up all day, hidden like a scar under a piece of clothing. He was a boy. He person. And this boredome would drive him insane.

That was what those two ugly-souled shrews wanted, too. They wanted the boy to lose his mind, so that they could dump him off properly at an asylum and forget Stephania's little mistake. Maybe then she could marry. Ha, marry. Cruccifixio prayed that if that girl ever did get married, that it would be to a temperless older man who would set her straight for this world. Boys can tolerate nagging, cruel women, but men do not stand for such things. Not Italian men. Not _Sicilianos_. Not even, Cruccifixio suspected, _Irlandese_, irresponsible as they were.

Higgins. The boy's name was Higgins, and there was no reason for it. His father had not taken responsibility for him, so his name did not deserve to be passed on. In true perspective, Stephania's name did not deserve to be given to the boy, either, because she had shirked the same duty. Not being there is one thing; being there with malicious spite is another thing entirely.

Cruccifixio looked down at the boy, and a sad smile lit his face as Stephania poured him a glass of wine. Taking the glass, the old man took a sip, his eyes ever fastened to the longing, youthful face.

"Patricio, would you like to play a game?" the Don asked him invitingly. The boy glanced away from the window, gazing hopefully at his mother.

"I do not think that is such a good idea, Cruccifixio," Donna Maria intervened coldly. "Your games lose you money."

The old man shot his sister a warning glare. "And your games lose boys their childhoods. Now come here, Patricio."

He took a deep, hopeful breath and kept his eyes on his grandmother, awaiting consent. Cruccifixio's gaze froze over with anger. His eyes shot to the elder woman, stitching serenely.

"What have you done to the boy, Maria? Why does he fear you so?"

Donna Maria glanced up, meeting his eyes, before returning delibrately back to her needlepoint.

_nobody calls him baby  
nobody says i love you so_

"Hey! Hey, LaFyette, getcha ass over here, boy! Where the hell doya think ya're goin'?"

The skinny runt of a pimp's son whirled around with a start, a little shiver rattling visibly up his spine. His wide, dark eyes collided with the slightly irritated, steel grays of a man who barely met the age qualifications to be called such. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it impatiently, waiting for the boy to hurry closer.

"Ye-yeah, Pops?"

The man snorted out a cloud of gray smoke. "Jeeze, boy, ya're skittery."

LaFyette shrugged nervously. "Yeah."

His father took another drag of his cigarette, pulling out a rusted watch on a chain from his faded, red silk vest. He always wore a silk vest. Silk, he heard, could stop a bullet, if woven tightly enough. He'd taken a good many silk vests from that Chang fellow down in Five Points. He'd taken his watch from a pawn dealer down on James Street, and where the pawner had gotten the watch, he knew not. All he knew was that it ticked, and it told the time within a second of the big clock on Times Square, so he didn't really care where the watch had originated from.

"I got collectin' to do. Find ya ma."

The boy swallowed anxiously, eyes darting about the alleyway. The man picked up on this immediately.

"Whassa mattah?"

LaFyette shrugged, his skin-and-bones body suffering another fit of shivers. "Pops, she's in the opium dens."

His father raised an eyebrow carefully. "So bring 'er back."

The boys teeth chattered. "But, Pops, they don't let kids in --"

The pimp snorted. "They ain't s'posed tah let dames in, neither, but yah ma sure as hell got in. Damn chinks. Here --"

The man (or older boy, as it were) tugged out a bill, stained and creased with an odorless alcohol -- vodka, most likely. That was Jacques Hardy's nickname. Vodka. Someone said they called him that because he looked like a ruskie, and he went with it. Someone else said it was because he killed a man for saying he looked as Irish as a potato, and he'd rather be a dub than a paddy. Somewhere along the line, he got the idea that being a frog might benefit his business, but that only lasted for the short period of time it took for his son to be named. His whores wouldn't let their leg hair grow like that, and his customers were disappointed to find out he didn't have genuine frenchie hookers.

This was LaFyette Hardy's world, and he knew it rather well, despite his pathetic appearance. His world was a circus of strange-looking men and stranger women; where most boys his age might only be accustomed to people of their same race, growing up in a slum of unfortunates from the same country, LaFyette was accustomed to all ethnicities. The cathouse was the great melting pot. A jaundy was a hunyak was a kike was a coon was a wasp, as long as they had the money. And the boy configured, in his young head, the taboo ideal that all men are equal. The world outside his home quickly erased this ideal, so he had to add a clause so that his belief system would not come crashing down: all men are equal, as long as they have money. Money kept Jacob Henry Schiff from being just another hebe and Joseph Pulitzer from being called a bozgor to his face. And LaFyette wanted more than anything to have the money, someday, to be as equal as he could.

LaFyette tucked the bill safely in his pocket, jerking a smile for his father. The pimp laughed for a reason the boy was unsure of, and pulled out another bill.

"How old are ya, now?"

The boy stared nervously. "Almost-almost thirteen, Pops, but my birthday ain't til next month --"

Jacques rolled his eyes and pushed the wrinkled paper into LaFyette's hand. "Close 'nough. When you find ya ma, give the chink at the door the one buck, and save the other for yah present. Go buy a drink from that there -- uh, ahh, what's that ugly nickelnose's name -- anyway, he'll getcha a beer. Or bring it back to me, and I'll letcha have Jewels's girl. She's pretty, huh?"

Color flushed to the boy's cheeks. "Pops, I don't know if I could -- I mean --"

His father gave him a disapproving look. "LaFyette, Jewels belongs t' me, so her girl belongs to me. You bring me back that buck, and you can have a happy birthday, 'kay?"

LaFyette swallowed nervously. He didn't want to ... be with a girl. He wanted ... well he didn't even get to be a boy.

_nobody calls him baby  
i guess he'll never know_

* * *

_Though I'd rather not distract from the end of the story with this note, I decided I might as well anyway. If you can't figure out --_

_ruskie -- Russian  
paddy -- Irish.  
dub -- Dumb Ukranian Bastard  
frog -- French  
jaundy -- Asian  
hunyak -- Eastern European  
kike -- Jew  
coon -- African-American  
wasp -- White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ("pure whites")  
hebe -- Jew  
bozgor -- Hungarian_

_Sadly, you can find all of these and so many more from the Racial Slur Database. What's also sad is how important slurs are when dealing with this time period, because the high immigration rate brought a lot of them to our language._


End file.
